Professional PHP5 (Programmer to Programmer Series)
ISBN: N/A
EAN: N/A
EAN: N/A
Year: 2003
Pages: 182
Pages: 182
The following section details the makeup of the Widget World landscape. These include the technical, financial, and political layers as well as your role in them.
If you've been paying close attention, you'll notice that information needs to flow from the Widget sales personnel up the chain to the Widget Master and back down again. In this case, information flow is definitely a two-way street.
Widget Marketing needs the sales information summarized by region.
Widget sales managers need to track various aspects of their personnel.
This project should save Widget World money by making the staff more efficient, which is ultimately why the Widget Master is willing to invest money in the project. But it's currently a toss-up as to what would save money quicker supplying the Widget World sales staff members with more information or receiving more information back from them.
One of the Widget Regional Managers secretly distrusts Widget Marketing. He thinks that Widget Marketing will use his supplied information as a tool to retire him early. The Widget sales staff welcomes the use of hard numbers to show how hard it's working it keeps the Regional Managers honest and will show who's getting promoted based on nepotism instead of on the basis of performance. Widget Marketers want to have press releases with nice-looking graphs and to show those graphs to their golf buddies.
You landed this job by responding to the ad in your local paper that said, "Widget World Needs a Sales Force Automation Tool Developer." You were contacted by the Widget World Sales Force Automation Tool Manager, passed its technical examination (in part by your dedicated study of Professional PHP5), and arrived at your job eager to start your new career in software development.
It happens to be 8:00 a.m. on Monday, and you'll never be this na ve again.
Widget World's Sales Force Automation Tool requirements appear to consist vaguely of:
Sales contact reports
Sales lead reports
Sales contact management lists distributed by e-mail, BlackBerry, fax, and Web reports
Widget Production feed based upon sales performance
Widget marketing reports and full-color, glossy, ready-to-print graphs
Widget accounting reports
Training
However, it's really the embodiment of a common scenario of a common project using best-of-breed development techniques to keep the customer happy. But even though the "customer" may appear to be just like the Widget World Sales Force Automation Tool Manager, he doesn't live in a vacuum; all the actors here have a vested interest in the outcome of their portion of the project.